Sacré Coeur and the Big Giant Head

Mr Matthew gave a one hour costume-design lecture-with-questions today at Sacred Heart in Chi Fu (Hong Kong). He did it from his sun room in sunny Bondi. It was a follow up to the two hour costume workshop last week, when kids brought in their costumes and designs and presented ideas and he gave feedback. The earlier one was more fun, authentic and messy as the kids were really invested in their work and their questions. This time everyone was trying to be good for the cameras and it killed the excitement. It's exciting to get a workshop with an outsider when you're in highschool. I'll get the video and put it online.

I've been ignored by one webhost/designer and rejected by a second (he's moving away from small business). I have a meeting with a third on Monday afternoon.

The meeting with Suzanne the accountant was fun. She talks really fast and you have to keep up. She's full of ideas and cross-references and asides. I like it. She's really a part of a community of women in business and I started to realise that if I register a business, I'll be one too. Crazy.

Things we will do this week:

1) A year plan with timeline and maybe a five year plan. [tan & matt]

2) Make a web page to keep brilliant ideas in existence, but out from underfoot. It should have the following categories:
done
urgent
soon
later
maybe someday
[tan]

3) Start on the first 1500 item zip-pack. [matt]

3) And make a list of stuff, knowledge, connections we have and call it 'captial'.
[tan & matt]

That's Bonnie's idea. Bonnie is a fab new friend who works with insigniam and thinks in extended metaphors. Also full of connections, asides and cross-references.

I also have these qualities.

I said it elsewhere, but I am really starting to notice something about women in business. A certain (explosive) flavour. I like it.


bed time for frances

l, tan.

sole, partnership, company, whatamie

Well Suzanne the accountant is already a rockstar. She sent me a pile of homework (as requested), for example her article on how not to stuff up a small business.

Should it be a small creature that is really us, or an independant company. If we call it aberline, what if Matt wants to sell it in 10 years time. Will he feel weird selling his name and seeing it do things in the world without him? Will he really have to change his name to 'Matthew Photo-Real-costume-resource-database'?

Her powerpoint says if you plan to deal with Americans or work in construction, you better get a limited company for when they sue you.

I'll make an appointment to see her this week. I'll ask if it's a good idea to start with a parnership or a sole thingy and scale up to a company when we need to. When we have some actual capital to protect.

What do you reckon Matt?

Steve from Jump hasn't given me my quote yet. That's annoying.

Talked to Katie and she knows two costume people we should get on board (as beta testers). One is House of Siren Guy who we didn't get around to seeing when Matt was in HK. Another is a guy who's in Bangkok, forgot his name.

Sleepy now. Goodnight!

"What Matt said..."

Since Matt doesn't believe he can post here, even though his name is listed under 'people who can post here', I'm going to paste in some of his earlier comment as it's full of ideas and ought to be a post of its own,

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yes a good name is cool but have always totally failed to find one. problem is - it is not just costume designers who will want to use the design tool. I think it will be fashion designers, games designers - really anyone who does digital visualisation of people and fabric - so you'd want a name vague enough to cover a whole bunch of design industries.
...
[more on names]

People are going to want to come to and use the website as it will make their life easier. It helps formualte their design ideas and gives them tools to communicate their ideas in a clearer, more professional way. Also, the industry is still very much in transition - coming to terms with digital technology - and I think many people are still looking for solutions that work for them. The best part about the website is that is designed by working designers - so I it has a intuitive usefulness.

I don't think we need a gimmick as such to get people to keep coming back to the site - I think we just keep creating beautiful work which we update in a public way every few days and the users can download this work for their own refernce material - or to incorporate into their own illustrations. I've always thought it needs to have a very vital, constantly evolving feeling.


Problem is - we need a system that can handle users searching through and downloading many thousand image files. We still have barely just started and we could easily be around 10,000 images. (Although we'd want to cull that down to just really good quality ones but you get the idea.)

Other problem - each object on the database is extremely subjective in how you name it and I'm not sure I want to spend the rest of my life doing keyword entry ie: stripe, striped, stripes, stripey,

I always tried to come up with an OBJECTIVE system but i don't think I've found it yet. The last bit of thinking was a human figure template (a bit like a toilet door person) where the limbs and torso are actually buttons and the user would select which part of the body the garment would objectively cover. For example, if you were looking for kneepads - you would just select the knees - but if you were looking for hot pants you'd just select the bottom part of the torso and the top of the legs... I'm not sure how this would work for garment components (like ruffles and draped fabric) as they don't follow the same rules and I'm not sure how this would work for human models either...




[...]
want to get Katerina Stratos (Moulin Rouge! asst designer) to work with me on my scheherazade book. Though we'd create about 40 test illustrations and then see if we could shop it around and get some interest. Also after mardi gras sitting in front of teh computer editing images sounds like a good time.
[...]
Remember the Irving Penn work of Issey miyake - that fabulous white space with those amazing images? That's really how I want it to feel. That's who I want to be - beautiful inspirational images floating in an empty creative space.

99

aberline beta

Ok. It's called 'aberline'. Elissa is the winner and gets a banana muffin.

Tanya is calling it 'the aberline project' overall and 'aberline beta' for the R&D stage - now.

aberline beta has a home!

www.aberline.net

Have a look, have a go, leave a comment or a request or a brilliant idea!

l, tan.

Name Storm

Hello

Give us your ideas for a name. A funky, designy, memorable, pleasurable, loveable name. Could be relevant or not. Put them in comments and I'll stick them in the next entry.
Winner gets a great sense of personal satisfaction.

I like the idea of some costume bit.

stud, eyelet, bone, cuff, plaid, tiara, trim, untrimmd (shakespearean for no frills?)

tan.

Wake up!

The Sydney Mardi Gras is over for the year and it's time to invent the design elements project.
I think it needs
- a cool name.
- a kitch cultish idea
- some quotes on webhosting
- a blog.